


Distractions and Allies

by Stariceling



Category: Sonic X
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-05-23
Updated: 2010-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 01:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some distractions Knuckles is an old hand at dealing with. Giant robots? Not a problem. However, having anyone else involved makes things a little more complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distractions and Allies

**Author's Note:**

> Set during season 2 of Sonic X, after parts of the two worlds start to merge. I guess Chris is more a hostage than an ally in the first part. The second half will just be friendshippy fluff, honestly.
> 
> Its become kind of my headcanon that Eggman inspired some people the way Sonic did. *coughs* But I'm not sure this guy's enough of a threat to make a real story arc around him.

One thing Knuckles had become used to over the years of guarding the Master Emerald was the long stretches of silence, always broken suddenly by intruders that obviously did not belong on the island. Even when Crisis Control had made Angel Island suddenly appear in the human world, that much hadn’t changed. All Knuckles could hear was the soft sigh of the wind.

His ears pricked up at the sound of a familiar ‘whoosh’ that signaled the presence of an intruder. A very fast, all too familiar, intruder. Knuckles was instantly on alert, even though he was sure this particular interruption was more of an annoyance than a threat.

Knuckles missed seeing Sonic’s approach, but when he looked up, Sonic was up a tree, one hand shading his eyes as he peered out over the island. He didn’t seem to notice Knuckles standing at the bottom of his tree, waiting impatiently for an explanation. After a brief scan of the island Sonic dropped from his perch, landing on Knuckle’s head before hopping down to the ground.

“Hey! Watch who you’re stepping on!” Knuckles shook his fist at Sonic, which of course did nothing to deter the cheeky hedgehog.

“But you’re so convenient.” Sonic flashed a grin before adding, “Haven’t seen anything odd come through here today, have you?”

Obviously he had known Knuckles was standing there if he was going to use his head as a landing pad. He must be looking for something else. Plus, even Knuckles could tell that he was distracted by something. Whatever it was, Knuckles was willing to bet that he would spill it of his own accord.

“Chris disappeared somewhere. He’s wanted to visit you out here for a while now, so. . .” Sonic shrugged as he said it, but he wasn’t coming off as casual as he normally would. “I guess he’s not here either.”

“Of course he’s not here.” Knuckles crossed his arms for a moment, thinking. “He’ll probably just go home eventually.”

It was a useless thing to say and they both knew it. For that second of thoughtful silence Knuckles was quite sure they were both thinking the same thing. Chris did have an unfortunate habit of finding trouble even without looking for it, but neither was going to come out and say it.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Knuckles offered. He wasn’t about to abandon his place on Angel Island to run here and there looking for Chris without any idea where the kid might have gotten to. Sonic would be better at that, anyway.

“Okay. I’ll be counting on you, Knuckles,” Sonic answered, not quite relieved, but certainly pleased with that answer. In the blink of an eye he was off again.

That was one of the more civil conversations they’d had, was Knuckles’s only lasting impression. Sonic was definitely distracted, either by his friend’s disappearance or something else, Knuckles didn’t know or particularly care. He didn’t expect that Chris would actually show up on Angel Island.

* * *

When the quiet atmosphere was broken for a second time, it wasn’t by anything so benign as the sound of Sonic whooshing in to chat. There was a crash that could be heard across the whole island. Whatever new visitor had reached the island, they certainly weren’t being subtle about it.

Noisy, incompetent fool or decoy? Knuckles forced himself to take a second to consider. The mechanical clank and crash of a robot not made for uneven terrain was obviously approaching, not trying to draw him out away from the emerald. Knuckles quickly decided on ‘fool’ and charged out to meet the intruder head-on.

The machine Knuckles found crashing through the trees, not to mention into them, resembled a lobster. At least it had a low, lobster-like body with a few too many legs and a pair of decidedly nasty-looking pincers. The pincers were attached to an unwieldy, upright torso shaped like a round drum, with a rather disturbing head perched on top. It didn’t have anything like a proper face in the design, just shining clumps of camera lenses making up a pair of compound eyes and two long, flexible antennae working this way and that.

It looked like something Eggman would have constructed out of a jumble of broken machines, assuming he’d fallen on his head first. Something about the pieced together nature of the design gave Knuckles a moment of confusion. It was like a reanimated scrap heap. Not what he expected for a serious assault.

Whatever it was it didn’t belong here, and it was making a mess of his island. It seemed to take a moment to study Knuckles with its glinting ‘eyes,’ then started moving again, as if to crash right on through the woods without heeding him at all.

There was no way he was letting this thing ignore him. Knuckles charged in, pride stinging, and aimed to land a solid blow on the machine’s torso.

The last thing he expected was for the torso to suddenly open, metal plates parting and sliding back to reveal a transparent cage embedded in the robot. Knuckles had to halt himself mid-swing, because Chris was suddenly right in front of his fist.

The realization that this had become a hostage situation made him pause just a second too long as he corrected his momentum. One of the pincers came swinging down and swatted him away as if he was merely a distraction.

Knuckles crashed backwards into a large tree with a loud ‘crack’ and slid to the ground. The impact wasn’t even enough to make him crash all the way through the tree, and it certainly wasn’t enough to break him. It was just enough to ensure that now he was _really_ mad.

In a second Knuckles was back on his feet and charging in again. At the moment his plan went as far as ‘get the kid out of the way, then completely destroy that hunk of scrap,’ which should be more than good enough.

When the pincer swung at him again he was paying enough attention to catch it before it hit. For a second he strained under the weight, then forced the pincer out in front of himself to intercept the second pincer when it came down like a hammer. The scrape and clang of metal on metal assaulted his ears as sparks flicked out from the point where the two metal limbs met.

Attacking from the front wasn’t working. Besides, Chris wasn’t moving back from the front of his cage. It would be dangerous if that glass shattered while he was right there, and the fact that Knuckles couldn’t hear anything when he could see Chris shouting meant yelling at him to get back would be useless.

All of this was assessed in an eye-blink, and a new plan of attack presented itself instantly.

Knuckles abandoned his frontal assault in favor of jumping up directly onto the lobster-mech’s back. He braced himself, riding out the tremors as it tried to buck him. The pincers couldn’t reach him here, but thrashed wildly in useless attempts to strike him off.

Free from significant interruptions, Knuckles focused on punching through the metal skin and into the back of Chris’s cage. Metal dented and bowed easily enough under his fists and the third punch went clean through, making a big enough hole for him to fit both hands inside.

Knuckles set about prying the cage apart, unable to stop a wince at the scream of metal parting under brute strength. He ignored the discomfort of metal edges trying to bite into his palms through his gloves. Soon enough he had a hole wider than his own shoulders, wide enough to make the metal buckle above and below.

Chris was on his knees, arms up to protect his head. The twisting and bucking of the lobster-mech wasn’t enough to dislodge Knuckles, but it did seem to be throwing Chris around fairly easily. Obviously Chris didn’t have the traction to get out on his own, so Knuckles braced one hand on the jagged opening and reached in to haul Chris out.

With a scramble and a lunge Chris caught his hand. It was easy enough to pull the human boy out. He wasn’t very heavy. Knuckles just steadied himself and gave one good yank, and Chris practically flew into him, colliding with his shoulder.

“Get out of the way,” Knuckles commanded, talking over Chris’s attempts to thank him. There was part one complete, as soon as Chris got himself somewhere out of the fray, and Knuckles was eager to get on to the ‘destroying the irritating pile of scrap’ part of his plan.

Chris shifted to climb down, but the mad bucking of the machine made him fall straight to the ground instead. He landed badly and lay still for a second, stunned. As if it was happening in slow motion, Knuckles could see that one of the flailing legs was going to land right on Chris’s prone body.

He had time to react. Knuckles grabbed hold of the leg from where he was on the mech’s back and pulled. The world’s pace had become like a series of stills under a strobe light. Knuckles could track the arc of individual sparks as he tore the offending leg right out of its socket. He flung the severed leg out of the way and it seemed to hang in the air where he put it. The motion of Chris lifting his head from the dirt was almost too slow to track.

And then, without warning, everything snapped back into the proper tempo. Chris was moving quickly enough to dodge the flailing leg that swept over him. He scrambled into the gap left where Knuckles had removed that offending leg and under the lobster-mech itself.

Knuckles jumped to the ground, still feeling vaguely disoriented. It wasn’t the first time the world had slowed like that in a sudden life-or-death moment, but usually he was the one being aimed at. All he could do at a time like that was react on pure instinct.

“Knuckles! Above you!”

The shout was all the warning he got, but it was more than enough. Knuckles caught the pincer that was trying to knock him off of his feet again, standing his ground until both feet sank into the turf with the weight of it. He was more than ready to get rid of this distraction. With his body set into the ground, Knuckles pulled as hard as he could, twisting and ripping the pincer out of its socket as he had done with the leg.

That was satisfying, but not enough to bring the metal monster down. Knuckles launched himself at the robot, swinging the still-sparking pincer, and knocked the head clean off with one strike.

Losing its head wasn’t enough to stop the lobster-mech either, but it did seem to make it lose all coordination. Knuckles watched, bemused, as it flailed and twitched with no apparent purpose. That should be good enough to render it useless.

Knuckles approached the malfunctioning mech, set both hands on its side while easily avoiding flailing legs, lifted, and gave it just a little push. It tipped right over, landing nicely on its side with legs still scouring at the ground without doing any real damage.

Chris had darted out from under the robot the minute Knuckles had started lifting. He hurried around to stand right behind Knuckles. He was out of the way, and Knuckles left it at that.

For a minute all Knuckles could hear was the mechanical ruckus of uselessly thrashing legs and the sound of both himself and Chris catching their breath. Before he could decide how to completely disable the machine there was an interruption in the form of a crackle of static coming from the head.

“What is this- this infernal malfunction? _What did you do to my beautiful robot!?_ ”

Knuckles didn’t even notice until it started shouting, but there was a speaker set in the head, right between the two antennae. He didn’t care, not with the feeling of triumphant calm that came from having his opponent reduced to impotent fury. Knuckles marched right over to where the lobster-mech’s head had landed and stood over it.

Both antennae were flailing around furiously, one whipping over his head. Knuckles didn’t so much as blink in response, but he heard Chris yelp behind him and suddenly Knuckles felt hands on his shoulders. An irritated glance back confirmed that Chris had crouched suddenly against his back for protection. The boy hadn’t needed to follow him.

“I put your useless robot out of commission for trespassing here,” Knuckles started with a sort of concentrated rage that boiled over by the time he got to his demand of, “Who are you!?”

The cluster of eye-like cameras turned toward him started flickering furiously. Knuckles crossed his arms, standing his ground to let whoever had shouted at him over that speaker get a good look at the island guardian they had decided to tangle with. He could feel Chris peeking over his shoulder, but tried to ignore it.

“WELL?” Knuckles demanded.

“How _dare_ you dent my beautiful machine! You– you– you repugnant rodent! I had the perfect defense against Sonic the Hedgehog and you-”

“Well, I am not Sonic!” Knuckles shouted back.

One solid punch put an end to the nonsense being spouted at him. The robot’s head bowed in under his fist, and with nothing more than a death crackle from the speaker the entire robot suddenly stopped moving, finally out of commission.

He knew he’d lost his temper, he just didn’t care. Gathering information was now second to getting this trash off of his island as soon as possible. Knuckles took hold of the robot’s main body and half-carried, half-dragged it back down the path it had made through the forest. He noticed the multitude of legs getting caught in trees and rocks on the way, he just didn’t care enough to do anything but keep pulling until they bent or broke.

Chris kept calling his name, trying to get his attention. Unless he had been injured or gotten himself caught in one of the island’s traps, and a quick glance showed Knuckles that he had not, there shouldn’t be anything more important than getting this distracting piece of scrap dealt with.

“Stay out of the way while I get rid of this,” Knuckles commanded.

Chris didn’t exactly obey. He picked up part of one of the broken off legs and followed. That was good enough for Knuckles.

Pitching the broken robot over the edge of the floating island and watching it fall into the ocean with a satisfying splash did wonders to soothe Knuckles’s temper. Now he could consider this irritation and threat neutralized. The rest was just cleaning up. Knuckles allowed himself a triumphant smile.

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“What?” Confusion at the question made him finally pay attention to Chris.

“You’re hurt!” Chris repeated, plainly upset. “Your hand’s bleeding!”

When Knuckles looked down at his hands he found a gash through both his left glove and palm, and bright red spots of fresh blood staining the white cloth. One more distraction to deal with.

Knuckles took the broken bit of robot leg from Chris’s hands and flicked it off the edge of the island as well, not even watching for it to splash into the ocean below. He turned away from the edge of the island and started back along the same path.

“Knuckles,” Chris started to protest again.

“Come on,” Knuckles interrupted. He punctured the statement by grabbing Chris’s wrist with his uninjured hand, giving him a firm tug to get him walking as well. “I’ll deal with it,” he added.

Knuckles didn’t know how to handle the fact that Chris already looked like he might cry, and he wasn’t even the one who was hurt. Besides, the wound itself was starting to throb painfully. Now that he’d dealt with the intruder, that would have to be his next task.

Cleanup was going to take a little longer than he had anticipated.


End file.
